About 3 years ago I got my first mp3 player, the Sansa e140. It was a decent little $80 player for the time, did basic things you need an mp3 player to do and was great for the gym. There really is nothing wrong with it even today, but the lack of features and some of the quirks were finally getting to me and I decided to start scouting out new mp3 players. I didn’t get far beyond the new Sansa Fuze line, my old Sansa stood the test of time and these new Sansas met my key qualifications:

The headphones above aren’t the ones that came with it, the ones that came with it are pretty awful, a disappointment next to the great little ones that came with the e140. And in case you don’t get a good enough impression of the size from that, I uploaded a European-friendly size comparison photo too ;) Hey, what else am I supposed to do with pounds and euros stateside?

I love it. The firmware that this one shipped with didn’t support ogg, but the firmware upgrade was only a .bin file away – even on Linux! The firmware extraction wizard for Windows may make things easier, but on Mac or Linux the directions explain that you just need to pop the player into MSC mode, plop the .bin file into the root directory of the player and let it install itself. It worked perfectly, the screen shot above has it playing oggs. The firmware upgrade also added flac support, which is a bit excessive on a 4G player, but options are good!

Well done Sansa.

Perhaps more important responsibility-wise I also got my new graphics card delivered today for my desktop. Over the weekend my old one had developed the infuriating habit of causing red pixel flurries on my screen and looked to be close to death. I replaced it with a $26 MSI RX1550 Radeon, which I just popped into my machine, booted back up, and with no interaction from me Ubuntu loaded up without a problem. It’s so nice when it’s that easy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 8:37 pm and is filed under pink, plug, ubuntu planet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Just found Sansa Fuze 4gb’s at the 34th and Walnut Ritz Camera Shop (going out of business) for $40 each.

Awesome community around the Sansa’s, got my GF a little Sansa Clip and it’s been wonderful, especially given that it works on Linux. However, the Fuze with its RIDICULOUSLY easy firmware upgrade in Linux, as well as ogg support, made this a must-have upgrade, and the fire sale sweetened the deal.